Marta Alfonso-Durruty and Deborah E. Blom's new edited volume, Foodways of the Ancient Andes: Transforming Diet, Cuisine, and Society, is a welcome and much-needed addition to the vast corpus of literature on this culturally diverse and chronologically deep region of South America. As noted by the editors and Susan D. deFrance in their introductory chapter, the Andes region provides a unique opportunity to explore the interconnections and entanglements among environmental, sociopolitical, and ontological questions, and the study of foodways is a particularly important and relevant avenue to do so. More than just a reflection of social and physical environments, the food gathered, produced, prepared, consumed, and discarded by Andean peoples through time highlights their resilience, ingenuity, and connectivity. Although archaeological research on Andean foodways has been a strong component of the academic literature for many decades, an edited volume focusing on this area of study is long overdue. Alfonso-Durruty and Blom's volume steps into that void admirably with its compilation of data-rich, methodologically driven chapters from a broad spectrum of scholars.
The book has 16 chapters, plus an introduction, and is broken down into five parts, each with a focused set of chapters addressing the general themes of each part and with frequent acknowledgments throughout regarding the connections among these themes. Part I addresses how place and long-distance interactions affect foodways; it features strong analyses of topics such as shifts in physical and social environments, identity formation, and changes in how particular foods were used through time. Part II focuses on early states and empires and the connections between food, power, and status—emphasizing feasting, the shifting role of maize, and indications of status through diet. Part III highlights food during periods of conflict and instability, looking closely at differences in health and diet between different groups of people, such as adults or children, elite or common, local or foreign. Part IV looks directly at how food defined the sacred and those of high status in the Inka empire, discussing negotiations of identity in the expanding empire and the cosmological importance of the materiality of foodstuffs. Part V ties it all together with concluding thoughts and a critical synthesis of the preceding sections.
The quality of the research here is exceptionally strong. The emphasis on data-driven interpretations in combination with well-supported theoretical frameworks throughout the volume is particularly notable. Let me discuss a few standouts. A significant proportion of the chapters use stable isotope data in their discussions, which balance nicely with the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological datasets. Among the isotopically oriented chapters, Chapter 9 by Beth K. Scaffidi, Natasha P. Vang, and Tiffany A. Tung is especially well documented and supported by the evidence; it reaches convincing conclusions about dietary change in individuals’ lifetimes and how maize was a social marker differentiating individuals at the late Early Intermediate period and early Middle Horizon site of Uraca in the Lower Majes Valley of Peru. Another highlight is Chapter 12 by Francisca Santana-Sagredo, Anahí Maturana-Fernández, Cecilia Lemp, Petrus le Roux, Chris Harrod, and Mauricio Uribe: it discusses the carbon, nitrogen, and strontium isotopic evidence for the coastal origins of camelid remains excavated from the Late Intermediate period Pica 8 cemetery in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile. Santana-Sagredo and colleagues effectively challenge the assumption of the highland origin of camelids in the region.
Perhaps the most important chapter in the book, from a methodological standpoint, is Chapter 4 by Melanie J. Miller, Maria C. Bruno, José M. Capriles, Iain Kendall, Richard P. Evershed, and Christine A. Hastorf. In sorting out discrepancies and uncertainties between excavated archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological materials and the results of carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses, Miller and colleagues apply a new method of differentiating between aquatic and terrestrial food sources by identifying distinctive amino acids during the isotopic analyses of teeth. Although this new method did not answer every question, it is an exciting and very promising avenue for future research not only on the Taraco Peninsula and Lake Titicaca region but also for any research seeking to find such distinctions in foodways. Throughout the book, this chapter was referred to by many other chapter authors, highlighting its importance.
No book is perfect, of course. The critiques I have, however, are relatively small but not unimportant. There are always going to be quibbles with specific interpretations or applications of method or theory, but my primary dissatisfaction with this volume concerns its scope. When I first was made aware of this forthcoming book some months ago, I was quite excited to see a comprehensive volume incorporating more than the most-often discussed and researched archaeological cultures and regions (e.g., Inka, Moche, Wari, Chimú, and Tiwanaku; and the Central Andes, Peru's North Coast, and Lake Titicaca area). In some respects, I was not disappointed. For instance, it was most welcome to see not just one but three chapters looking at the archaeology of Chile, from the semiarid north (Alfonso-Durruty, Nicole Misarti, and Andrés Troncoso, Chapter 13) and the Atacama (Santana-Sagredo et al., Chapter 12) to Chile's south-central coast (Carolina Belmar, Omar Reyes, Augusto Tessone, Manuel San Román, and Falvia Morello, Chapter 2), and covering a broad range time periods and societies. However, the definition of the Ancient Andes as applied in this book appears to extend only as far north as Peru's Jequetepeque Valley (Katherine Chiou, Chapter 11), and that chapter is somewhat of an outlier. In general, despite its title, this book does not include vast expanses of the Andes north of the Wari and Inka heartlands. The inclusion of chapters exploring, for example, the Chavín region, Chachapoyas, or the Ecuadorian highlands and coast would have brought that level of comprehensiveness that I and perhaps other readers were expecting or hoping for.
Overall, however, this is a strong volume, full of detailed and well-supported research on ancient Andean foodways. Each chapter was concise and applied evidence-driven interpretations. The organization of the book was well thought out, with the various chapters and parts leading logically into the next. The volume is effectively bookended by a clear outline and introduction of themes and a thoughtful critical summary of the research and its place in both Andean studies and the study of foodways more generally (deFrance, Chapter 16). I highly recommend this volume not only to scholars of Andean archaeology and foodways but also to any scholar interested in the archaeology of food and culture.
